The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for communicating documents with portions linked to electronic reference information. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for receiving document images and linking the received image with electronic reference information, wherein the image is communicated using standard, existing equipment that otherwise would not have this capability.
Known in the art are document management/recognition systems for facilitating the archival storage and retrieval of documents. Some of these systems will reduce a document down to its constituent components in the course of processing the document for storage. Examples of constituent components are text fragments, graphics fragments, bar codes, etc. In order to enable the retrieval of any given document, or to permit an original document to be reconstructed from its parts, index information may be saved so as to permit associations to be formed between attributes of the documents. However, such methods do not teach the method and apparatus of the present invention.
Also known in the art are systems for manipulating symbolic representations of text such as ASCII, EBCDIC, or the like, wherein embedded codes can be inserted at a position in the text to refer to another position, or to other information associated with the position of the embedded code. The disadvantage of these systems, however, is that the document must be both created and accessed using software capable of processing the embedded codes.
The document images of interest herein can reside on conventional hardcopy media such as paper, and may be transmitted using nothing more than ordinary facsimile equipment designed for transmitting ordinary monochrome hardcopy documents. A distinction should be drawn between equipment sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cDesktop Faxxe2x80x9d units and those called xe2x80x9cPC-Faxxe2x80x9d units. The former are designed to accept hardcopy documents as input, which are scanned and then transmitted to a remote receiving station. The latter operate on data already in electronic format which reside in the memory of a computer; and, with respect to paper-based hardcopy, require their conversion into electronic form before operations of any kind can be performed on the contents of the hardcopy. Whereas the method taught by the present invention is not precluded from use with PC-Fax equipment, it is particularly useful in connection with ordinary Desktop Fax equipmentxe2x80x94a significant consideration in view of the limitations of such devices as compared to the capabilities possessed by the former. The present invention can thus be used by the most rudimentary of facsimile equipment, thereby imposing a minimal set of requirements on the document sender with respect to hardware and software. In contrast, this is simply not possible with techniques currently known in the art. For example, techniques which rely on binary file transfer to communicate documents containing color transmit digital data files, as is evident from the name, and not document images; moreover, they mandate the use of a computer to process the data file being sent.
The present invention is also to be distinguished from systems directed at manipulating symbolic representations of document information, such as ones where text occurs in ASCII form, rather than in the form of a document image. Such systems cannot operate on information contained in hardcopy documents until the hardcopy documents have been optically scanned and converted into machine manipulatable code by OCR software. Only then can commands of any kind be embedded into the block of symbolic data. Furthermore, appropriate hardware such as a computer, and software such as a text editor, must be available for manipulating the symbolic data. Such systems do not enable conventional facsimile equipment to be used as they lack the capacity for symbolic manipulation. Such systems clearly do not enable a sender having nothing more than a conventional monochrome facsimile machine, a hardcopy document, and a marking implement such as a pen to achieve the benefits described herein.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for altering designated portions of a received document image that does not suffer from the drawbacks of prior art systems.
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for communicating documents with portions linked to electronic reference information. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for receiving document images and linking the received image with electronic reference information, wherein the image is communicated using standard, existing equipment that otherwise would not have this capability. For example, a standard fax machine may be used to convey a document having a portion electronically linked to electronic audio information.
The present invention comprises an apparatus for linking a document with reference information associated therewith comprising means for receiving an electronic representation of a document image, said document having a portion to be linked to electronic reference information, wherein said portion is designated by a predetermined attribute of the received document image; means for electronically scanning the electronic representation of the document image to locate said predetermined attribute of the document image; means for identifying the linked portion of the document based on the location of said predetermined attribute; means for acquiring the electronic reference information associated with the linked portion; means for correlating the linked portion of the document with the associated electronic reference information; and means for providing a pointer from the linked portion in the document to each piece of electronic reference information associated therewith.
In one embodiment of the invention, the received document image may be transmitted using standard facsimile protocols and the electronic reference information comprises audio information transmitted using standard voice channel telephony.
In a further embodiment of the present invention, the electronic reference information comprises address information related to the designated portion of the document image. The recipient of the document image is provided with means for receiving the document image and the electronic reference information comprising address information. The recipient""s means further comprises means for accessing the address information and establishing a communications session with the address or addresses associated with the designated portion of the document, which may, for example, include a voice telephone number, facsimile number, pager number, e-mail address, or a World Wide Web (WWW) address.